‘Thar’ Movie Review: Anil Kapoor's Heroics And The Rugged Terrific Locales Salvage This Dark Gritty Thriller

Director

Raj Singh Chaudhary

Cast

Anil Kapoor, Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor, Fatima Sana Shaikh, Satish Kaushik, Nivedita Bhattacharya, Rahul Singh, Jitendra Joshi, Sanjay Bishnoi, Sanjay Dadhich, Mukti Mohan

What’s It About

Siddharth (played by Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor), an antique dealer travels through a Rajasthani remote village that has been rocked recently by many violent killings. As local inspector Surekha Singh (played by Anil Kapoor) investigates these killings, he crosses paths with Siddharth. Will Siddharth be able to find what he has come to the village to find? Will Surekha Singh be able to find the killer who has been on the manhunt? Who is actually behind these random killings? Well, for all that you’ll have to watch the movie.

Watch Trailer

What’s Hot

The real hero of this film is the locales. The dry and arid locations that the makers have shot the film in actually make this film come alive. Not that locales are too good looking or over the top beautiful but they impart the emotion of loneliness, which the people of this area suffer from, and which is an important aspect of the film’s plot. What people keep referring to as a Hollywood westerner has been tried in ‘Thar’ and the effects have come out really well.

Anil Kapoor is in fine form. He has been coming up with some stellar performances in the past few years. Whether it was ‘AK Vs AK’ or ‘Thar’ – his performance has been knockout. He manages to not only play a cop of a rural village to perfection but also gets very well into the psyche of a man who has always felt stuck at his position in work and has never been able to make not only his seniors but also his family happy. The fitness with which he performs the action scenes defies the fact that he is actually 63 years old in real life.

Unlike what Anil Kapoor has done in his younger days, Harsh Varrdhan Kapoor comes up with a very subtle and poised performance. He is that smooth killer vibe who is scanning everyone he sees and meets in this rural countryside. In his previous films also, he hasn’t been one whose face has been too emotive, but in this case, that works in his favour, as the character demands someone who has an absolute poker face throughout. Jr Kapoor does well in maintaining that aura.

While not many would be into guns and gore, but there is a sizeable populace who wouldn’t mind seeing it onscreen. ‘Thar’ is definitely for you. The detailing with which the scenes of torture are shown makes you feel like turning your face away from the bloodshed. But at the same time even make you want to applaud how accurately it must have been filmed. Cinematographer Shreya Dev Dube and the entire makeup artists team need big applause for the same.

What’s Not

A basic flaw in this storyline is the absence of a strong secondary villain. Rahul Singh doesn’t have too much to bring to the table as his character is too short. That invariably leaves you as the audience to think of only one person who is doing these killings, and at the end when that person only turns out to be the killer, you feel slightly let down. Thus making the plot a bit too predictable.

The dialogues were much-hyped in the trailer considering they came from the pen of Anurag Kashyap, however, when you see the final product, you feel that the makers used everything up in the trailer. That entire analogy that Anil Kapoor gives with reference to ‘Sholay’ is pretty much the height of the dialogue delivery in ‘Thar’ – and you’ve already seen it in the trailers. Therefore, there is nothing more to look forward to in the final film in this respect.

Another letdown here is Satish Kaushik. He has been coming up with some of the most quirky and unusual characters in the recent past. Even though he is decent in the minimal screen time that he has but it would have been great if the director would have explored his character a bit more. Maybe give that angle of him being a great meat cook despite being a hawaldar a bit more weightage in the story.

Not much of Fatima Sana Sheikh either onscreen. This is the second time after ‘Ajeeb Daastans’ when someone she falls in love with, got her pregnant and then wasn’t around to be the father figure. Mukti Mohan, despite having some feisty sparks in the character, has so less screen time that you just look at the character as a blink-and-a-miss.

Director Raj Singh Chaudhary tried an amateurish move by revealing the entire pathos of the lead character only in the climax. Had the climax been a bit more stretched, maybe the trick would have worked, but in order to cut down on time and keep the feature short, he has managed to rush through the emotions of the flashback scenes. Therefore, as a viewer, you’re not heavily invested in the emotion of why the killer did what he did.

Verdict

While Chaudhary has made a great attempt at bringing forth a dark neo-noir thriller, but in his haste to keep it under two hours, he has just squandered a great plot at hand. Despite the predictability of such a story, had there been a couple of more elements at the right place, at the right time, the feature film could have been as good as any other Hollywood westerner. Thankfully, Sr Kapoor makes up quite well for the other shortcomings. If you’re into guns and gore, this is definitely a worthy One Time Watch. I am going with 3 stars.